Uncategorized

Latest update for students doing NCEA this year.

Covid update 6 School info for Parents

Guidelines for WHS Students – going remote

Guideline for WHS Parents – Remote Learning

 

Dear Parents/Caregivers and Students

Student Support Services-on line support

The students will be able to contact the Nurse between 9am and 3pm from Monday to Friday (except on statutory holidays). Here are the contact details:

MAGGIE LETHWAITE/School nurse

027 618 9225            nurse@waihekehigh.school.nz

The doctor will also be available via on line face to face clinics during term time, starting Monday April 20^th. We can organise appointments on the Monday mornings. If a student requests a doctor’s appointment via a text or email to the nurse, they will be emailed a link for an on line consultation. The nurse and the school psychologist can also do on line face to face clinics.

The students will be able to contact the school counsellor from Monday to Thursday, except between the 30^th March and the 15^th April 2020.

LIZ MORRIS/Counsellor

02108928511        morrisl@waihekehigh.school.nz

If you contact the Counsellor, they will send a link that enables you to join them in a session, whether it is audio/video/message.

Now that we are about to move on to Level 4, we feel it is imperative to provide on line support for our students. It is anticipated that we are going to see a rise in mental health issues over the next few months or so.

The numbers/websites in the information below are available if you need extra support over the next 4 weeks

USEFUL NUMBERS AND WEBSITES
Emergency 111
Your GP
Oneroa (09) 372 8756

Ostend  (09) 372 5005

Piritahi Hau Ora (09) 373 0022

Crisis team (24/7) 0800 800 717 – mental health emergency number
Kari Mental Health (9-5) (09) 623 4646 –Youth mental health support office hours
Need to Talk (text or call 24/7) 1737 – you will talk to a qualified counsellor
Whatsup 08009428787  www.whatsup.co.nz –  Barnardos helpline/webchat for children & teens
Youthline 0800 376 633 free txt 234 or Youthline.co.nz – focus on young people
Thelowdown.co.nz or free txt 5626 – phone/call or chat online if anxious/down or depressed
Aunty Dee https://www.auntydee.co.nz/  – Aunty Dee is a free online tool for anyone who needs some help working through a problem. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, you can use Aunty Dee to help you

23rd March 2020
Tēnā koutou
Re : COVID-19 Update – School Closure

This afternoon Jacinda Ardern has announced that New Zealand’s status has shifted to Level 3 and will shift to Level 4 in 48 hours.

This means that our school will be closed to all students from 3.30pm today, except for students whose parents are in essential services. Essential services include doctors, nurses, police, service stations, supermarkets and pharmacies.
These students are only to come to school for the next two days but this is not compulsory.
Waiheke High School will be closed to all students from 3.30pm on Wednesday, 25th March.
It is important that students check their email and google classroom because this is the way their teachers will communicate the work that they need to complete in the days ahead.
Please check emails because it is imperative for your child’s learning.
Stay safe, be kind and take care of one another.

Ngā mihi nui
Robyn Woodall                   Jude Young
Board Chair                          Principal

This week I was lucky enough to attend the Tuturu Summit in Wellington with Tony Sears. I was surprised it went ahead with the current world events, but happy that it did. I come home feeling quietly confident that we are on the right track at Waiheke High School. Tuturu is a tool that has been developed to help schools cope with drugs and alcohol in our communities; it deals with the well being of the student and gives them strategies that will enable them to be safe in a world that also includes drugs and alcohol.

Waiheke High School has been involved with Tuturu for a couple of years now. We are blessed with a fantastic team who deliver the programme in our school in our health dept along with the counsellors and the nurse. Tuturu recognises that there is no one plan fits all, and they help schools to tailor it to their individual needs.

We occasionally read on social media pages about mischief and sometimes criminal activities that happen in our community including drug use. This does not happen often but when it does inevitably parents get blamed, why doesn’t school do something, and negative comments about the kids themselves, this is the general theme of the posts. One of the roles of the board is to see these young people when they muck up at school and are suspended to the board. I would say that in probably 99% of the time the whanau of the student are looking for help with the behaviour of their children, they just want them to succeed at school and go on to be good productive citizens of our Island.

If you are still reading, consider this a holiday from Covid-19 and read on! The world’s clever people will eventually vanquish Covid-19 but we will always have youth who make mistakes. They say “It takes an Island to raise a child”. These kids belong here on the Island and they belong in school. This programme is helping us to develop the tools to keep them in school and at the same time ensure school is a safe and dynamic place for all students to learn and grow. Our students are awesome. Every time I attend a school event, be it Matariki celebrations, sports events, prize giving or other school events, I see the pride they have in their achievements and the aroha they have for each other. I see the kids who have had a second chance, and sometimes a third or fourth chance amongst their peers and I have no regrets in trying again for them.

Stay safe, be kind and look out for each other.

In case you missed it, the Government has recently confirmed its final NCEA change package. Schools have been advised that the changes are intended to: strengthen our national qualification; address over-assessment and fragmented learning; promote culturally responsive teaching and learning; and improve accessibility, the support available to teachers, and the information available to students and whānau.

A copy of the Ministry of Education’s announcement is available here: Ministry website.

There are changes to the subjects that the Ministry proposes to support at NCEA Level 1. This is consistent with the policy objective – for NCEA Level 1 to become a broader, foundational qualification that allows students to keep their pathway options open, while Levels 2 and 3 promote greater specialisation.

The Ministry has asked me to encourage you all to give feedback. Public engagement on the subject list for NCEA Level 1 has commenced for a period of two months (closing on 20 April 2020).

More information is available on the Ministry’s website along with the provisional subject list for NCEA Level 1: https://consultation.education.govt.nz/ncea/ras-provisional-subject-list. The Cabinet paper and Ministry advice have also been made public (see under the February tab). You can find the list in the engagement questionnaire, or for your ease of reference it is also accessible from this link to the Cabinet paper (go to pages 19 and 20).

Waiheke High looking forward

Waiheke High School wants to be the best school it can for our island community. The ‘Striving for Success’ project provided an insight into how the community views the school, and our next step is to work with all stakeholders to establish just what the ‘best school’ looks like for us. We’ll be working with students, parents, school staff and the wider community to develop this vision, so it will take some time.

There are 2 areas that we are focussing on now.

Building the school vision and direction

A recurrent theme identified early on in the project was the need for the school to have a stronger identity, and a clearer sense of who we are and what we stand for. The development of a strong identity and a clear vision for the school is paramount to moving forwards.

To help achieve this goal the WHS Board of Trustees is seeking proposals from skilled, experienced people to assist it with this visioning process.

Reviewing our communications

Another of the messages that came through from the project was that we’re not always good at communicating. We want to fix that as quickly as we can. So we’re looking for someone to review our communications and tell us how we can improve them.

We’re looking for a communications professional(s) who understands online, local and traditional media. Ideally they will understand the way the island grapevine works and will be familiar with schools and the communication challenges they face.

These will be a short term project contracts.

Contact us

More information about this work is available here Visioning RFP . You can also contact Robyn Woodall (Board Chair) at robyn.woodall@infratel.co.nz, Jude Young (Principal) at youngj@waihekehigh.school.nz or Grant Duffy (Parent Trustee) at grantduffy@hotmail.com.

If you are interested in either piece of work send us an expression of interest including a covering letter outlining why you are interested in the work and what you would bring to it along with a brief CV by email to harringtonb@waihekehigh.school.nz by 20 September. The Board of Trustees will then invite a short list of candidates to prepare a short proposal for the project.

Congratulations to Gil Selem who came 5th overall in the North Island final for the New Zealand Brain Bee Challenge (NZBBC). The NZBBC is a competition for high school students in Year 11 to learn about the brain and its functions, the latest discoveries in neuroscience research and to find out about the various career opportunities that brain research has to offer.

Tara Lewis-Beolens, Jerry Griffin and Gil Selem competed in Round 1 of the competition. Gil was invited to go on to Round 2, along with 150 students from around the North Island who achieved the highest scores in Round 1. She spent the day at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland, listening to speakers who included Professor Richard Faull, PhD students researching Huntington’s Disease and a scientist who performs cochlear implants on animals and is researching aspects of the auditory pathway.

Gil scored 5th overall in the individual competition and her team won the ‘best composite team’ prize.  Gil was also fortunate to receive one of 10 ‘golden tickets’ in a draw and will have the opportunity to spend a day at the Centre for Brain Research. Any current Year 10 students interested in participating in the 2020 Brain Bee Challenge will have an opportunity to sign up for the competition this year.

Katherine Cole, HOD Science

 

Olive Andrews is a research scientist and is the Marine Programme Manager for Conservation International. When she is not “guiding marine research and tourism expeditions from the tropics to the poles”, Olive resides on Waiheke Island.

Olive came into school to speak to the Year 11 and Year 12 classes as a part of their Academic/Careers and Mentoring course. Students were captivated as she shared her experiences of leading scientific research up in the Pacific Islands, her conservation projects and career journey. Olive’s impersonation of  Mr Curly’s (humpback whale) mating song was a crowd favourite!

More recently Olive spoke to the Year 7 Social Studies classes about her experiences down in Antartica. They were fascinated by all the different categories of ice, the penguins stealing each others nesting rocks, the ability of the Antarctic winds to blow people vertically across the ice plains. Of course the students loved all her cute photos of seals and Lolita the Whale who has a love heart on her dorsal fin.  After Olives talk, it appears half of our Year 7’s are now considering pursuing Marine Biology and want Olive’s job!

We are lucky on Waiheke to have so many passionate experts in our community. Our students benefit from engaging with our wider community adding depth to our localised curriculum. Exposing students to real world experiences is so valuable and inspires them to see where their education can take them!

Kia Ora Olive.

Julie Campbell, Science Teacher

Click on this link to watch a video about Olive’s research in Niue

https://www.conservation.org/blog/meet-a-scientist-the-whale-whisperer

http://kermadec.aucklandmuseum.com/expedition-team/olive-andrews/

 

The Waiheke High School Board of Trustees is actively seeking Maori Representation on the Board.

There are two processes and positions in place currently:

1. The Māori Community Representative will be selected by Piritahi Marae. This process will be completed by the end of August.

2. The School Whānau Representative will be appointed by the whānau.

If you are interested in the School Whanau representative position please could you speak to Pita Mahaki who will inform you about the process and its requirements. Pita can be contacted on mahakip@waihekehigh.school.nz

A whānau hui will be held in D7 classroom at Waiheke High School at 5pm on Wednesday 21st August. 

At this hui, the nominees standing will present their aspirations for Māori education and someone will be co-opted as the Whanau Representative to the Waiheke Board of Trustees.

Yours faithfully,
Robyn Woodall
Chairperson
Waiheke High School Board of Trustees